Immutability of Epicurean school in ancient times

1. A feature. And remaining true to correct insights is not "stagnation." There is no revising core doctrines such as "there are no supernatural gods" or "there is no life after death." "Ideal forms do not exist" -- etc. There's either agreement that they are correct or start a new school with different views.

2. I have no doubt that new arguments were introduced over time to deal with new arguments from the opposing schools. But when you have the fundamentals correct from the start, there's no need to revise them, and any customization to meet new arguments from opponents does nothing to undercut the original core.

I think part of the reason Epicureanism remained unchanged is because it treated with clear finality certain of its basic premises, and it did so in a way that rendered any further dispute rather pointless among those that accepted the premise. Consider such premises as there is no life after death, and Nature was not created, but has always existed.

Any school of philosophy proposing that there is life after death has not ended a dispute but begun one; what is the afterlife like? Is it eternal or finite? Is it the same for everyone, or will people experience different afterlives depending on their respective portions of fame, virtue, nobility, or piety? How long does the soul linger in the body, and where does it go after? Is there any hope of return from the afterlife? Can people still living contact those who are dead, and vice versa?

Christianity has shattered into a million tiny fragments over questions like these, but for the Epicurean every one of these points of argument is utterly meaningless. There is no life after death, so there's no point in speculating about what that non-existent 'life' might be like. Such speculations, which are not even of academic interest, will certainly never have the power to bring about schism, or mutual recrimination, or factional infighting. And quite a lot of Epicurean philosophy is like that; once you accept the premise that nature was not created by a god, or that the substrate of everything that exists in nature is mere matter, or that the senses are fundamentally reliable, you slam the door shut forever on all of the speculation that does not take its point of departure from that premise.

When we examine the things that did change and develop in ancient Epicureanism, they are quite minor. Epicurus preferred to transmit his ideas in uninterrupted discourse and in plain dress, but that did not prevent Lucretius from casting them in verse, or Lucian from engaging with them in dialectic.

I scanned over the opening pages of the Numenius material and there's a lot of good information there, with the Epicureans coming off very well in comparison to the schisms of the other schools, the problems and schisms of which inevitably arise from the notorious teachings of forms of skepticism:

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I. Why the Successors of Plato diverged from Him.

1. Under Speusipptis, Plato’s nephew, and Xenocrates, his successor, and Polemo, who took over the school from Xenocrates, the character of the teachings remained almost the same, because the notorious teaching of the “reserve of judgment'’ and the like, did not yet exist.

I see also this article. Numenius is a Platonist and therefore a mystic, but at least he seems to have understood the problems with skepticism.

Numenius (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Numenius’ best attested work is his treatise On the Dissension of the Academics from Plato (frs. 24–28 Des Places, also in Reinhardt 2023). Eusebius in his Preparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel) has excerpted five long pieces from it (in book XIV). The reason why Eusebius quotes so extensively from this work of Numenius is in order to substantiate his claim, which permeates the entire Preparatio Evangelica, that ancient philosophers were in disagreement with each other. He takes that feature to indicate the inability of pagan philosophy to reach the truth (on Eusebius᾽ reading of Numenius see des Places 1975, Jourdan 2015). This is an originally skeptic argument, that is employed by Academic and Pyrrhonean skeptics alike, to the effect that dogmatic philosophy amounts to failure because of the disagreements occurring in it (Cicero, Academica II.115, Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians II.11). Eusebius has a special kind of disagreement in mind, namely that with Plato’s philosophy, which he considers to have come closer to the truth than any other pagan philosophy, that is, in his view, to Christian doctrine (Praep. Ev. XI.pref. 2–3, XI.8.1, XIII.4.3). Numenius’ testimony in this work fits well an argument like that of Eusebius. For Numenius criticizes in this work the departure of the skeptical Academics from what he considers to be Plato’s central doctrine, namely, the doctrine of first principles of reality that Numenius finds adumbrated in the 2^nd Letter attributed to Plato (fr. 24.51–6). For Numenius it is primarily the disagreement of the Academic skeptics with Plato’s allegedly dogmatic philosophy that marks a failure.

The scientific method really didn't exist back then. And they only had very basic scientific equipment. So they had no way to test these ideas. Nevertheless, from what I've read, they were not wrong in their premises, modern science simply is more refined.

Quote from Sam_Qwerty

The scientific method really didn't exist back then. And they only had very basic scientific equipment. So they had no way to test these ideas. Nevertheless, from what I've read, they were not wrong in their premises, modern science simply is more refined.

I understand I think why you say that, and in this context I would say it's important to distinguish between a philosophy and an applied science. Yes, applied sciences are likely always going to discover new details in their fields of expertise, but that doesn't mean that the general approach (that logical reasoning based on observations leads to the conclusion that the universe is natural and has no mystical forces over it, for example) will ever require revision.

I am a major proponent and fan of "modern science, " but "modern science" will never replace philosophy, and they ought not to be considered to be in competition. There will always be "unknowns' beyond the current reach of the science of the moment, and it will always be necessary to take philosophic positions about how to deal with those circumstances.

So Epicureanism would be more in competition with let's say, secular humanism. I haven't really looked into either one. Although when I look back on my life, I have always done what I enjoyed.

Quote from TauPhi

I came across this observation from Numenius of Apamea who wrote the passage some 500 years after Epicurus and I thought it may be interesting topic for us to discuss. Epicurean school in antiquity was uniquely resistant to any change or innovation. When other schools went through distinct periods in their development - Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, Early Stoa, Middle Stoa, 1st Academy, 2nd Academy, umpteen academy etc. - Epicureanism had never developed. No new ideas were introduced, nothing was really questioned or corrected, there were around 10 scholars in succession that we know of who run the school and yet no-one really deviated or influenced in any significant way the teachings of the school.

Both Cassius and Joshua have given very good posts above to address this critique of the Epicurean school, given by the Platonist Numenius.

Just because we don't have anyone labeling that there were subtle differences between time periods, doesn't mean that there weren't differences.

I would venture to say that there could likely be seen some differences between the "Early Epicureans" and the "Philodemus Epicureans" - a stronger emphasis on physics and canonics in the early time vs. a stronger emphasis on ethics by Philodemus. Perhaps Bryan might have something to say?